Outstanding among Italian operatic sets of the interwar years, this was also the first complete recording of Ponchielli’s masterpiece. Inevitably the sound quality of 1931 is at some disadvantage in comparison to later versions; the carefully orchestrated score, large-scale ensembles and off-stage effects need more space and clarity to do them full justice. Yet, to compensate, the voices have the vivid immediacy of their period and Ward Marston’s transfers are excellent.
The work of chorus and orchestra is certainly among the strengths of the performance. That in turn reflects on the conductor, Lorenzo Molajoli, of whom Paul Campion in his appreciative notes for the booklet is tempted to guess that he may have been ‘the nom de disque of another celebrated conductor who could not, for contractual reasons, be named’. It’s an intriguing notion and one can quite see why his results here and the scarcity of information about him elsewhere encourage it; but Molajoli was real enough, a repetiteur for Toscanini in the early years of the century at La Scala, and later artistic director of Columbia Records in Italy. Anyway, he clearly has a sure grip on his forces and a strong feeling for the opera itself, which had been given at La Scala, under Toscanini, as recently as 1927 with Arangi-Lombardi and Stignani heading the cast in their present roles.
The three male principals were also Scala singers, though not in this opera. Alessandro Granda, a Peruvian who made his Italian debut in 1927, was also Columbia’s Pinkerton and Cavaradossi; as Enzo in La Gioconda he is per- haps a little too slender and lacking in heroic potential, yet the tone is incisive and the characterisation convincing. The baritone Gaetano Viviani (who for a season was La Scala’s Telramund and Jokanaan) is most exciting, a Ruffo-imitator perhaps and a bit throaty, but rich, vibrant, grandly sinister and not unsubtle (his ‘Pescator’ is a model of suave robustness). These are not qualities shared by the Alvise, Corrado Zambelli, who sings with dull authority and unimpressive low notes: a pity they did not have Tancredi Pasero for the part. Mind, if they had, that would have meant the addition to the cast of one more singer with a fast vibrato (Camilla Rota’s La Cieca being another), which might have proved all too much for listeners of more modern times. Stignani, whose young voice was ideal for the part of Laura, is free of it, and Arangi-Lombardi relatively so. But she, the heroine of the recording, is one of the main reasons for acquiring this set, which also includes a selection of her solo recordings, giving a fuller portrait of a highly distinguished artist.
Regarded by her contemporaries as a singer of the old school, she presents a Gioconda more appealing to modern tastes than the overcharged verismo-style of predecessors such as Eugenia Burzio. She brought to the role the refinements heard in her arias from Lucrezia Borgia, I lombardi and La forza del destino. There is also a thrilling intensity about her singing, so that, although Lauri-Volpi in his book Voci parallele (Garzanti: 1955) recalls that as an actress she was never quite able to liberate the impulses of her personality, one would be most unlikely to guess as much from these records